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Miners put 2-0 start on line against Hampton

UTEP women's basketball coach Keitha Adams is all about teaching points, and heading into Sunday afternoon's game with Hampton, she picked up a big one from the season's first week.

In the opener against Houston Baptist, the Miners came out with fire and a pop in their step and ran the Huskies off the floor. Two days later they came out flat and cold against Northern Arizona and found themselves in a two-point game past the midpoint of the fourth quarter before easing away to 2-0.

That ended up being a fairly painless way to learn a lesson and Adams was making sure her team assimilated it.

"The best thing that happened was we didn't play well and we won," she said. "The big thing is we've got to define ourselves, how we're going to play. We need to play up-tempo, high-energy defense, that's our tempo. We need to play at a high pace."

While the rotation figures to get smaller as conference play gets nearer, the University of Texas at El Paso is going to run deep this year and players have already shown that they can unleash a scary press with an ever-changing cast of athletic and big guards. What they have to do is get more consistent with that, and with everything they do.

"We have to improve communication and defense, rebounding, we have to be more patient," said center Tamara Seda, who didn't start against Northern Arizona but came in two minutes into the game and played a starter's spot in the rotation the rest of the way. "This game (against Hampton) is very important, we have to keep getting ready."

If nothing else, Hampton will be ready, as perhaps no one in the nation has opened with a tougher stretch. The defending regular season champions of the MEAC, the Pirates come in 0-3, which is understandable considering they've played three road games at Iowa State, Washington State (68-61, the one game they were in in the fourth quarter) and Oregon. After UTEP, they play Wednesday at Texas.

Their star is guard Malia Tate-DeFreitas, who through three games is averaging 19.7 points and 5.7 rebounds. Kaylah Lupoe, a 6-foot-2 sophomore forward, averages 9 points and 5.7 rebounds, while everyone else is under 6 points per game. Through three games against power-conference teams, their average loss has been 83-57.

The Pirates do have a good tradition. They went 14-2 in the MEAC last year, advanced to the second round of the WNIT and finished with a 19-13 record.

"They've played a really tough schedule," Adams said. "They've won some games (last year), they are very athletic, they create trouble with matchups."

UTEP can cause trouble as well when the team plays fast, and that's the goal Sunday.

"We need to get on them like we did the first game, a lot of intensity, a lot of energy from the beginning," Chrishauna Parker said. "We scored 36 points in the first quarter of the first game, 16 in the first quarter of the second game. We need to have intensity."

The Miners have pretty good examples of what happens when they do that and what happens when they don't.

Bret Bloomquist may be reached at 546-6151; bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @bretbloomquist on Twitter.

Game details

What: Hampton Pirates at UTEP Miners in a women's nonconference basketball game